Anatomy of motivated self-importance: too much of me just isn’t enough (guest post)

Too much of me just isn’t enough: an anatomy of motivated inflation of self-importance.

A controversial recent study has shown that prominent climate sceptics are six times more likely to show narcissistic characteristics than the rest of the community. The tendency is highest amongst those who maintain their own blogs, and especially those with blogs carrying their own names.

Said researcher, “At first I was blown away by this result…, I mean, when you get people responding to surveys and their collective answers are such strong outliers, you question whether you have made a mistake.”

But it seems that careful rechecking of the results has only confirmed the analysis.

“Those that run anti-science climate ‘sceptic’ blogs are simply much, much more into themselves than pretty much anyone else we have ever studied. And by ever, I mean in the entire literature up until this point”.

Respondents scored highly on metrics such as;

How often they refer to themselves.

How eager they were for others to share their high opinion of themselves.

The high negative rating they gave to being personally ignored.

The results pretty much show that the need for ‘reinforcement of self’ is almost constant in this group; it is likely that they run their blogs as a self-validation exercise.

“Failure to have their ‘followers’ reinforce their sense of importance likely leads to an impotent rage. As psychologists, we can only say this seems unhealthy.”

“How can any conclusion be drawn from a survey about climate sceptic bloggers being narcissistic when that survey does not take in me? It beggars belief that I could have been overlooked for this survey. Its clear what warmists are up to, they want to paint us as self-obsessed nutters, and they must underestimate our collective intelligence if they think we would fall for that trap”

The researchers themselves reveal that, while Nova was originally overlooked due to a simple oversight — “…ironically, we had never heard of her” — inspection of her blog provided reason for caution on her participation in the survey.

“We were initially worried about sample sizes, and hence questioned whether the inclusion of McIntyre and Watts might, by themselves, skew the results toward findings of overt self-obsession. When we saw Nova’s chin-down-eyes-up self-portrait on her blog (entitled, as it happens NovaCane), we wondered whether we could ever get a sample size large enough to accommodate her.”

“She is basically an outlier, even amongst this group of arch narcissists, we felt we would have had to throw her results away to be honest.”

The researchers do believe that there might be promise in developing a narcissistic index based on Nova Cane.

“Since it is doubtful we would find a subject more into themselves than Nova, we thought we might usefully scale future responses against that.”

We believe most people would fit on a scale of narcissism that ranked from 1-10 Novas. The scale is exponential, so we have coined 10 Novas as the ‘Super Nova’ rating for egocentricity. Psychologists can be corny at times.”

But the sceptics aren’t done with yet, with Nova herself firing the warning shots.

“If they thought our attempts at amateur climate science were the end of things, then they are mistaken. We will attempt amateur psychology as well, and then, well, who knows?”

Tony is correct – I was clear. I’ve caught the comment and snipped so see above.

Also:

– I’ve allowed robust debate onm WtD, but monitoring much more carefully and about to publish guidelines to settle the issue for all in the “About” section
– There is a utility in allowing cranks to post: they do the research leg work for me 🙂

With Deniers, I usually don’t know whether to laugh or cry. However, I usually think it a bad idea to give them any ammunition, as they are quite good at creating scandal where none exists. They 10:10 video, clearly a joke, was turned against climate activists, and was counter-productive.
Now, maybe I missed something, but when I read the study that the above post links to, I didn’t see any reference to measuring personality variables.
So I assume the above post is a parody.
In which case, I don’t expect the Deniers to just laugh it off.

The paper looked at how climate change denialism was predicted by the acceptance of other conspiracy theories.
I didn’t see any reference to measuring narcissism by frequency of self reference in blog posts, or any other metric.
That made me think the above was meant as a parody.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see any references to measuring narcissism on shapingtomorrow’sworld either.

But I don’t think this is a parody site.
A parody post on a non-parody site will be spun as a smear, a lie, a distortion of the science, which is what they accuse warmists and climate scientists of doing all the time. They will point to this as further evidence of the mendacity of ‘warmists’.
Everyone knew 10:10 was a joke; but it suited Deniers to pretend it wasn’t, and act outraged.

Nova and Evans seem to believe that the current powers-that-be are intent on using fiat money to exert political control over the global population and have been working towards this end for centuries. As noted, fiat money is a particular obsession of “New World Order” fantasists who believe a shadowy cabal are trying to create a one world government through the UN, IPCC and international treaties.

This is truly the “paranoid style of politics”.

It clearly explains Nova’s rabid hatred of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which in her eyes is nothing more than a massive scam to create “false wealth” and yet another lever of power to be used by “them”.

He had to come back and say more a few mins later:(turns out to be a board memeber of FoE) (my asterisks for swearing) – see link, for very next comment)

JohnHalliday:

“Actually, I have to say something stronger,
this film is ******* ridiculous.
I am a local Greenpeace coordinator, and a Board member of Friends of the Earth and I just can’t believe that you have produced a film that is so ******* stupid.
There, I’ve sworn on the Guardian.
Jesus, where is your common sense. We’re trying to win hearts and minds.
This is just ludicrous.”

seems to be a Guardain regular and a passionately commited environmentalist
one of his current comments below: